Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination. Working Paper 03-22

We study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perceived race, resumes are randomly assigned African-American- or White-sounding names. White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. Callbacks are also more respon-sive to resume quality for White names than for African-American ones. The racial gap is uniform across occupation, industry, and employer size. We also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names. Differential treatment by race still appears to still be prominent in the U.S. labor market. {JEL ill, J64). Every measure of economic success reveals significant racial inequality in the U.S. labor market. Compared to Whites, African-Ameri-cans are twice as likely to be unemployed and earn nearly 25 percent less when they are em-ployed (Council of Economic Advisers, 1998). This inequality has sparked a debate as to whether employers treat members of different races differentially. When faced with observ-ably similar African-American and White ap-plicants, do they favor the White one? Some argue yes, citing either employer prejudice or employer perception that race signals lower pro-ductivity. Others argue that differential treat-ment by race is a relic of the past, eliminated by some combination of employer enlightenment, affirmative action programs and the profit-maximization motive. In fact, many in this latter camp even feel that stringent enforcement of affirmative action programs has produced an environment of reverse discrimination. They would argue that faced with identical candi